Essay Notes - The Final Girl Trope

While planning to write my essay I decided that I will be researching into The Final Girl trope and writing my essay about it. I think my question that I will be answering will be -

• Why the ‘Final Girl’ Trope is the ultimate grey area between Feminism and Sexism. 

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These are some notes I have for my essay:

The original meaning of “Final Girl", as described by Clover in 1992, is quite narrow. Clover studied slasher films from the 1970s and 1980s (which is considered the golden age of the genre) and defined the final girl as a female who is the sole survivor of the group of people (usually youths) who are chased by a villain, and who gets a final confrontation with the villain (whether she kills him herself or she is saved at the last minute by someone else, such as a police officer), and who has such a "privilege" because of her implied moral superiority (for example, she is the only one who refuses sex, drugs, or other such behaviours, unlike her friends). 

A defined ‘good girl’ in the books. No sex, no drugs, no scandal, avoids parties etc. 

In Halloween, Laurie Strode is the only one in her group of friends that doesn’t party. She denies going over to her friends for the night to babysit. While she is babysitting, her friends across the road are partying and getting up to no good. They are the first to die.  

Laurie's room is decorated to be smart girl's room 

Laurie is the final girl, the only survivor of her friend group 

Horror Genre

Scream 1996

RANDYS RULES 

*Script*

Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex. 

BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. 

The sin factors! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, "I'll be right back." Because you won't be back. 

Stu: I'm getting another beer, you want one? 

Randy: Yeah, sure. 

Stu: I'll be right back. 

Randy: See, you push the laws, and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife. 

Sidney Prescott - Scream: Sidney is another popular Final Girl.

Sidney Prescott (Scream): What's the point? They're all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. 

A word on Black women and ‘the Final Girl’ trope.

 

The Final Girl in movies is still usually white.

Alfred Hitchcock: “Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.” 

This attitude has prevailed in even modern and more enlightened horror films which still depend on the empathy for female victims whose purity is conflated with whiteness. 

In many ways this reflects real world attitudes, Gwen Ifill coined the term ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ to describe the disproportionate panic that surrounds imperilled white women. We see this reflected in Horror films that repeatedly foreground white women in danger while treating minority characters as disposable. 

 

Horror films also reflect this in their settings, taking place in the familiar confines of high schools and safe suburban neighbourhoods. Showing terror invading an idyllic often lilywhite community that believes “it's not supposed to happen here”  

 

To Quote: Halloween 1978 Leigh Brackett: “Dr do you know what Haddonfield is? Families, children, all lined up in rows up and down these streets, you’re telling me they’re lined up for a slaughterhouse?”